Adam N. Michel
Adam N. Michel and Josh Loucks
Vice President Kamala Harris recently announced a new proposal to expand the tax deduction for start-up costs for small businesses from $5,000 to $50,000. Without the immediate deduction, the deduction of start-up costs must be spread out over 15 years. The Harris proposal allows us to dig deeper into the various business expenses that can’t be fully deducted and to demonstrate how delayed deductions hurt business growth.
A deduction delayed is a deduction partially denied because time and inflation erode the value of the write-off years later. Under the normal tax system, a $100 investment deduction that must be incrementally used over 15 years is only worth about $74 to the business in present value (assuming 2 percent inflation). Fifteen years of waiting erodes a quarter of the deduction’s value to the business, which increases the after-tax cost of investing. When costs rise, investment falls.
This problem is even worse for investments in residential buildings and other structures. These longer-lived investments must be depreciated or deducted over 27.5 years and 39 years, respectively. At 2 percent inflation, the present value of the deduction for an investment in a structure is cut in half.
Fixing this problem of waiting to recoup the cost of new investments, particularly for structures, could be the most important change to the tax code to boost investment and economic growth.
For a timely example of one way to even out the tax treatment of some business investments, consider legislation recently reintroduced by Sen. Mike Braun (R‑IN) and Rep. Kevin Hern (R‑OK) (S. 4924 and H.R. 9069). The proposed modification would shorten the depreciation schedules for structures to 20 years and allow the remaining deductions to be indexed for inflation and the time value of money. This system is often called neutral cost recovery. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/treating-business-costs-correctly-tax-code